Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Oliver Krüger and Frederik Schenk: The Long Run

1 Introduction

Just recently, klimazwiebel released an interview with Reiner Grundmann , in which he reports about his struggles with publishing a somewhat controversial paper. The story we are about to tell and the previous interview fit neatly together.

2 The Story

Half a year ago, we planned to write a comment to Donat et al. (2011) in the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). Because GRL changed its policies regarding comments to already published manuscripts, we prepared a small paper. In the following peer review process we realized that getting published would eventually become difficult. We received two rounds of reviews with GRL, which finally rejected our manuscript.

Later on we revised the manuscript and submitted to the Environmental Research Letters (ERL), where the manuscript was rejected after one round of reviews. After that incidence, we submitted to one open discussion journal, namely Climate of the Past (CP). CP rejected the manuscript immediately at the initial review stage. The initial review, done by one of the editors, is supposed to be a low standard to enter the open discussion, but we failed nevertheless.

In total we received seven reviews that lead to the rejection in three journals in a row. These seven reviews varied in their opinions significantly. They varied from minor comments to major comments. They were either positively or negatively minded. We also received "interesting" comments. For instance, one reviewer suggested that the average of +1 and -1 is 0.

The editor who did the initial review for CP was more open to questions regarding his rejection. He stated that our results would be plausible, but not convincing (even though he believed our results).

After these episodes, we decided to change our publication strategy. We put the manuscript on arXiv.org to make it publicly available. At the same, we submitted to Journal of Climate, from which we are expecting news whether they are willing to start the review process or not.

3 The Manuscript

The manuscript we are talking about is called "Inconsistencies between long-term trends in storminess derived from the 20CR reanalysis and observations" by Krueger, Schenk, Feser, and Weisse.

In the letter to
the editor we wrote: “In the manuscript we analyze storminess derived through a
pressure-based proxy (extreme percentiles of geostrophic wind speed) in the 20th
Century Reanalysis dataset 20CR over the Northeast Atlantic and compare our
findings with results obtained from pressure observations.”

And continuing: “Our
findings are based on a relatively simple, yet robust method for analyzing
storminess over the large and well studied area of the Northeast Atlantic. The
results point to a marked inconsistency between storminess in the reanalysis
dataset and storminess derived from observations, which casts doubt on the use
of 20CR to describe long term trends, at least in terms of storminess. We
believe that changes in the number of stations assimilated into 20CR are a
plausible explanation for the discrepancies.

The 20th Century
Reanalysis dataset 20CR is a new climate dataset that reaches back to 1871.
Because it is nearly 140 years long, scientists hope to use it for long-term
trend analyses. With our work, we are assessing how realistically 20CR
describes such long-term trends in terms of storminess. We chose to restrict
our analyses to the Northeast Atlantic region as this region has been in the
focus of several studies in the past that deal with storminess. Ideally,
results obtained through 20CR and observations would agree with other, also
because the pressure observations analyzed in those past studies have been very
likely assimilated into 20CR. Unfortunately, as aforementioned, storminess in
20CR and observed storminess differs significantly.”

Despite from being rejected by several journals, we are continuing our struggles, because we believe it is worth to do so. We do not know yet how many approaches it will take us. Even though our manuscript seems quite controversial, we are willing to initiate a discussion about the topic if somebody lets us.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

1. Reiner, you have published the paper “’Climategate’ and The Scientific Ethos” in Science Technology & Human Values. I understand that this article had a long history of submissions and rejections. Would you mind telling us, what happened, and what you think why this happened?

Global sea-level has
risen at a pace of about 1.8 mm/year in the period 1960 to 2003.
Several factors are contributing to this rise: ocean thermal
expansion, glacier melting, and ground water depletion. Which factor
has been the strongest contributor ?

Saturday, May 12, 2012

This one deserves a post of its own: James Hansen's truly apocalyptic vision of current climate; the answer by Martin Hoerling from NOAA, and finally Kerry Emanuel's comment here on Andrew Revkin's dotearth. In my opinion, Kerry Emanuel's statement demonstrates beautifully that both alarmism and its critics have done their job; now it's time to talk seriously.

(Thanks to Reiner, who posted the link to these articles already here).

Thursday, May 10, 2012

During the last week we
have been confronted by two papers published in Nature
and Science
relating changes in the cryosphere and global sea-level. Their
conclusions point to opposite directions and the attention they have
found in the media is quite unbalanced.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Reiner Grundmann has now published two articles on "ClimateGate". The first is

‘‘Climategate’’ and The Scientific Ethos.
It was published on-line on 23 April 2012 in Science Technology Human Values, and the full article is available here. Before acceptance for publication, the article met lots of flak.

The abstract reads:
In late 2009, e-mails from a server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were released that showed some climate scientists in an unfavorable light. Soon this scandal was known as ‘‘Climategate’’ and a highly charged debate started to rage on blogs and in the mass media. Much of the debate has been about the question whether anthropogenic global warming was undermined by the revelations. But ethical issues, too, became part and parcel of the debate. This article aims to contribute to this debate, assessing the e-mail affair in the light of two normative analyses of science, one proposed by Robert Merton (and developed further by some of his followers), the second by a recent suggestion to use the concept of honest brokering in science policy interactions. On the basis of these analyses, different aspects of malpractice will be discussed and possible solutions will be suggested.

The second paper is the "opinion" article in WIRES Climate Change with the title

The abstract reads:The release of emails from a server at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009 and the following climategate controversy have become a topic for interpretation in the social sciences. This article picks out some of the most visible social science comments on the affair for discussion. These comments are compared to an account of what can be seen as problematic practices by climate scientists. There is general agreement in these comments that climate science needs more openness and transparency. But when evaluating climategate a variety of responses is seen, ranging from the apologetic to the highly critical, even condemning the practices in question. It is argued that reluctance to critically examine the climategate affair, including suspect practices of scientists, has to do with the nature of the debate which is highly politicized. A call is made for more reflection on this case which should not be closed off because of political expediency.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Last week, the Heartland Institute, one of the controversial skeptical lobby groups in the US which oppose climate change regulations, initiated an even more controversial poster campaign across the country. Next to a picture of Ted Kaczynski, the jailed Unabomber, the posters read "I still believe in Global Warming - Do you?"
Kaczynski had written a pamphlet against modern society which you can read here.

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.